Distress
by 9r7g5h
Summary: It should have been the happiest day of their lives.


**AN:** WHY DO I DESTROY EVERY CHARACTER I LOVE? Seriously, guys, this is becoming a problem. It should _not_ be this easy to write these kinds of stories, but when you look at my fluff-to-tragedy ratio, it is horribly skewed. That being said, it was not fun to write this. While I'm normally okay with writing these kinds of stories, this one was hard. It was really, really hard. Oh, and if you really want to torture yourself and make it worse, read the story while listening to this www. youtube watch?v= tpi5RoNmvTU in the background. Don't know why it was in my music list, but this is what I was listening to for the entire time it took me to write it. It was AWFUL! Anyway, I hope that you enjoy this miniature story that my twisted mind forced on me the moment I woke up, and that you don't hate me while I go cry in a corner now.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Wreck-It Ralph.

* * *

Sitting as he was next to Ralph in the hospital corridor, with Vanellope tucked under his arm as they waited for the news, there was only one sentence that Felix could think about.

_It's gone into distress._

"It'll be fine, Mr. Fix-It," one of the nurses had said soothingly as she pushed him into Ralph's restraining grasp, the others wheeling her away to surgery so that they could fix whatever had broken in their eleventh hour there. "It's a quick, standard procedure," she had promised as the doctor filed after his assistances, his very presence a reassurance that nothing could go wrong, that everything the nurse was telling him now would be true. "An hour, tops," she had promised with a smile, "and then you'll be able to see your wife and child."

That had been three hours ago, and still there was no sign of it ending.

"She's going to be fine, Felix," Ralph muttered quietly once again as he felt his brother shift by his side, his hand reaching over to pat him on the shoulder as he tried to calm the shorter man's fears. "She's going to be fine."

"Yeah," Vanellope said with an eager nod, her wide eyes filled with determination as she refused to give up on the woman who had become part mother, part sister to her over the past few years. "After everything Sergeant Sourpuss has been through, there's no way she's going to let a little something like this take her down. She's going to be fine, Felix," Vanellope said, adding her own promise to the mix as she snuggled into his side, his arm automatically tightening around her to hold her as close as he could. "She has to be."

_It's gone into distress._

"Do you guys know whether it's going to be a boy or girl," Vanellope asks sometime later as she wiggled from his grasp to stretch, her body sore and stiff from remaining in one place and one position for so long. Although there was no real curiosity in her voice, for this was a conversation that the two of them had had many times over the course of the last nine months, still he answers, forcing his mouth to move so that he does not seem to be rude.

"We wanted it to be a surprise," Felix replies in a monotone, too focused on the barrier that separated him from his wife to bother to put any real emotions into his words. "We decorated the nursery in yellows and whites, and we were going to choose a name off of the list that we made after we saw it. Tammy and I figured that it would be better, more fun, this way…" His words trailing off and his spine stiffening as a rustle came from behind the door, all three of them wait for something, anything, to happen, to end this nightmare that had been their life for the last fourteen hours. For a long while more they wait, the sound of hushed voices mixing with the pounding in his chest that grows as the moments pass, his breathing ragged and uneven as he desperately waits for the news that has been kept from him.

For a long while more, they wait.

The moment the nurse walks from the room to hand him his child, he knows, for under the sounds of the hospital staff calling out orders, the high-pitched cry that tugs his heart toward the infant in the nurse's arms, and Ralph and Vanellope's instant questions about its mother, for the few seconds that it takes for the double doors to swing shut behind her, he can hear the long, low, consistent beep that only ends when the heart monitor is unplugged.

He never hears the nurse's explanation, never notices as Ralph crushes the chairs that they had been sitting on, and he never realizes that it is Vanellope back in his arms whose soaking his shirt, for as he sinks to the ground, his legs unable to support him as his vision blurs and his ears ring with the sound of that beep, there is only one sentence that he can hear.

_It's gone into distress._


End file.
